Roberta’s

261 Moore St., Brooklyn (718-417-1118)

This gourmet pizza place, located amid a desolate-looking stretch of warehouses in Bushwick, is often described as a D.I.Y. enterprise. The label is slightly ambiguous—aren’t a lot of other restaurant entrepreneurs doing it themselves, too? Carlo Mirarchi, the chef at Roberta’s and one of its three co-owners (his partners, Chris Parachini and Brandon Hoy, are former musicians), suggested, the other day, that the difference is in the economics: “We just didn’t have any money when we started.” So they built things from scraps. Hence the cinder-block walls and the shipping container in the back yard, which hosts a radio station and a hothouse garden, made from PVC piping and Visqueen, on the roof. The restaurant doesn’t exactly feel undiscovered, but it’s out of the way enough that it’s not always mobbed, Manhattan style, and the décor—Christmas lights, pogo sticks—seems genuinely amateurish and unstudied. It’s the kind of operation you probably once dreamed of building in your parents’ garage.

The pizza? Chewy and perfectly enticing, it comes from a wood-burning oven up front, and features highbrow ingredients (speck and sopressata) and lowbrow names (the Cheesus Christ). Still, it’s easy to get distracted by the more sophisticated stuff coming from the back kitchen. The menu changes constantly, but the restaurant’s success means that there are always takers for foie gras (served with rhubarb), coppa di testa (headcheese), a pork chop that doesn’t taste like pork chop, and sea urchin—the theme, Mirarchi said, is “things we like.” On a recent night, the sweetbreads, lightly battered and fried, were like Coney Island popcorn shrimp, served with herbs, honey, and a smear of MitiCrema. Poached duck egg, an oozy bubble balanced on a lump of aged Shelburne cheddar cheese and maitake mushrooms, tasted like the essence of Sunday morning, even though it was a Thursday night. There’s always pasta—orecchiette with salty braised oxtail had a springy texture. Maryland soft-shell crabs, fried with buttermilk and a dab of Wondra flour, were tasty, but they were upstaged by a plate of sugar snap peas—warm, firm, and slightly charred, served with pickled ramps and fermented garlic.

Sunday brunch might be a good time to try the pizza. Several items—pork jowl, hot wings, sticky buns—are comforting, but heavy compared to the dinner food. The upbeat hip-hop and the picnic tables full of wine-drinking patrons contribute to the sense of being at a bleary daytime house party that spills into the yard. Out back, there are signs designating certain areas “staff only,” but it’s hard to tell, among the people milling around, who is staff and who is a paying customer. The bottom line? Do it. (Open weekdays for lunch and dinner and weekends for brunch and dinner. Entrées $7-$26.) ♦

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